Plane passengers were grounded for two hours with a dead body

Passengers were piloted with a corpse for two consecutive days after the passenger died on board – and paramedics had to crawl into the plane because of a series of airport blunders. A flight from Hong Kong to Auckland was diverted to Cairns on Monday morning. The Air New Zealand flight arrived at Cairns International Airport about 2.30AMA male passenger aboard the Boeing 787-9 plane due to unknown cause. The staff struggled to get the body off the plane because of the wrong size of stairs.

Charlie Moore for Daily Mail Australia

Published:16:25 EST, January 7, 2019

|updated:16:35 EST, January 7, 2019

Horrified airline passengers were left with a corpse on the ground for two hours after a man died on a flight to Auckland. The ANZ80 flight from Hong Kong was diverted to Cairns airport at 2.30 am on Monday morning after the man died as a result of an unknown medical emergency. When the aircraft landed, the pilot could not connect the aircraft to the terminal via an aerobridge, because at that time there was not enough ground staff to operate the aircraft.

The Air New Zealand flight arrived at Cairns International Airport on Monday morning around 2.30 am (stock image) Instead, he asked a number of stairs for paramedics to enter the plane and remove the body. But the stairs that arrived were too low, meaning the paramedics had to lift themselves in the plane – while shocked passengers waited for their seats. An airport source told the Cairns Post: "They found a small flight of stairs, which they put at the door of the plane. They were totally inadequate. The ambulance brothers had to lay their equipment on those stairs and stand on them, and they were still standing high on the door. They had to climb in that plane. & # 39; This happened two hours, & # 39; said the source. Eventually the body was removed and the flight could continue to Auckland, where it landed two hours late. A spokesperson for Air New Zealand confirmed that the flight had been diverted because of a "medical emergency". "For privacy reasons we can not provide any further information about the passenger," she said. "The plane continued to Auckland, and arrived about two hours behind schedule. & # 39; Advertisement